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Night Vision Diaries: Foxing on the Raith Estate Pt1

Night Vision Diaries: Foxing on the Raith Estate Pt1

I’ve been lucky enough over the last year or so to be accepted into an elite foxing team on the Raith Estate in Kirkcaldy, Fife. I’m now working alongside like-minded professionals, Keith Wood (the full time Gamekeeper) Mark Wallace (a shooter and outdoorsman who lives in one of the estate houses) and Paul Murphy (a professional deer stalker and fox controller). I don’t know if it was my superbly accurate rifle skills that got me selected, or the fact that I have the Pulsar XD75 thermal weapon scope and the Pulsar Quantum XQ38S thermal spotter in my arsenal, but it was an honour to be asked onto the estate to help control the foxes.

Lots of pheasants

This estate has the biggest pheasant shoot in Fife, so at this time of the year, as pheasants are being put into pens, there is even more effort put in by the team to find the foxes and try to eliminate some of the cubs before they start getting too educated.

Recently, Keith lost 131 pheasants to a single fox. It killed indiscriminately in a frenzied attack and left the pen with just one bird. Graeme shot it as it was heading up the path from the pen but then saw the aftermath of the attack.

During mid June the crops and cover start to come-up, which makes our job of foxing quite a bit harder. In areas where the cover is too high, I find the best way is to get in position and wait it out. At this time of the year, the high seat works well but requires a lot of patience. I also use my Idle Back shooting seat with an armrest attached - providing two points of contact; the rifle sits in the top adjustable rest and your arm sits on the bottom adjustable rest, which makes for a rock solid shooting position.

Sit still!

The seat section also rotates on a roller bearing, letting you scan through your scope from side to side without moving your rifle or getting into potentially uncomfortable shooting positions. There are several methods and types of equipment that can be used for sitting-out on foxes, but whatever method you choose, you must ensure that you are comfortable and able to sit for two, maybe three hours or so without moving. It’s the movement that will get you seen and alert foxes to your presence.

Raith fox controller, Mark Wallace had twice seen a fox working the Balbarton Strip, an area of the Estate. So Mark and Keeper Keith erected a portable high seat and asked me to wait out on the fox. I arrived on a Monday evening around 7.30 pm. Without knowing which way the fox would come into the area, I parked the pick-up a good distance away so as not to alert the fox – changes to their environment can alert them to potential danger.

Swirling winds

The area where Mark had seen the fox working could not have been any more awkward for a shooter, as it was a field surrounded by trees. So the wind came through the trees and swirled around in different directions, making it impossible to determine wind direction. This had given me a bad start, as the fox could wind me at any point. So there was no choice but to sit it out.

I climbed up into the high seat, got settled and stayed as still and quiet as possible. It was a good night for sitting out; not too cold and thankfully not too breezy, as the wind would do me no favours in that area of the Raith. An hour or so later, I picked up movement with my thermal spotter, it was a cracker of a roe buck coming out the trees. Often when sitting out for foxes, when it gets to grey dark, the deer can appear before the foxes, giving you a good indication if you have the wind direction correct.

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On this occasion, the roe walked across the front of me then lay down in the knee high grass just to the right of the high seat. After 15 mins it stood up quickly then ran back into the woods barking, which told me that it had winded me after lying there a while. This meant the wind was moving around inside the clearing that I was looking out onto, so if the fox entered the area from the right, it may also wind me.

22.00

Dead on 10 o’clock I watched the fox through the thermal as it started cutting through the field from the right, but I could not move until it was just about in-line with me as it might have spotted me in its peripheral vision. It approached the area where the deer had laid. No sooner had I placed the crosshair of the Pulsar XD75 scope on its chest and it took off like a scalded cat before I could squeeze the trigger. It was obvious the wind was not in my favour on that occasion.

The following night the wind was coming from the east - the total opposite from the previous evening. So I climbed back up into the high seat again to see if the fox would make another appearance and perhaps I would get lucky with the change in wind. Just as had happened the previous night, as grey dark hit, a deer came out of the woods opposite me to the left and started walking across the front of me, but this time just as it got in-line with me it took off barking into the woods. Even with the wind coming from the opposite direction, the deer still winded me in roughly the same place.

Creature of habit!

Yet again, at 10 o’clock on the dot, the creature of habit entered the area from the exact same place as it did the previous night. As the fox cut across the field, I placed the crosshair on its chest, and then it took-off yet again before a shot could be taken. It felt like ground-hog day – pretty much a carbon copy of the previous night’s events. It just goes to show that in some cases you cannot read the wind and use it to your advantage. In some situations it comes down to sheer luck and in this case it favoured the fox!

With the uncertainty of the wind, I didn’t think it was worth trying the high seat for a third night. So I consulted Keith, Mark and Paul to create another plan and approach the situation from a different angle. It was decided that I should sit on the opposite side from the high seat on my Idle Back chair. I would be just in the edge of the wood, so if the fox was to come in the same way, I would be looking straight onto it and possibly get a shot as it would be walking towards me.

I visited the area earlier in the day and setup the seat, then rearranged some branches so I could get a clear shot in the direction of where the fox appeared two nights previous. It’s important to prepare the area hours before sitting-out, so then you can quietly get into position and wait, which is what I did at 7 o’clock, fully expecting a three or four hour wait. Yet again, as grey dark hit, the roe deer walked out of the wood, close to where I was sitting, walked right across the front of me and laid down in the knee high grass. But this time it didn’t move, which told me that the wind was definitely in my favour.

Late!

Another hour had passed, it was after 10 o’clock and the deer was still there but no sign of the fox. It was late – the previous two nights it arrived dead on 10 o’clock. Where was it? How long would I have to sit for? Had it found food and was now back feeding its cubs? Or will it arrive after midnight? We rely on foxes being creatures of habit, so when they break their routine, all sorts of questions entered my head. Still convinced the fox was going to make an appearance, I decided to sit it out as long as I could. I had to be up at 5:30am for work, so that determined how long I could stay out for. Admittedly it is sometimes difficult to give up the wait. When I have had to give up on a fox, I’ve been kept awake with questions of what went wrong.

12.30 am came and went pretty quickly, and still no sign of the fox. Unfortunately, it was time to head home and face the questions in my head; was the strategy wrong or had the fox taken a different route to fool me? Some nights you can sit out for a fox and with an hour or so everything goes to plan and you get it, but this time it wasn’t meant to be; 13 hours over four nights and no result, so I think it’s fair to say that Mr Fox had got the better of me. Fair play to him.

Even though we call ourselves fox ‘controllers’, we have very little control over nature. It was time to go back to the drawing board and try something different.

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  • Night Vision Diaries: Foxing on the Raith Estate Pt1 - image {image:count}

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  • Night Vision Diaries: Foxing on the Raith Estate Pt1 - image {image:count}

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